THE CRAB, ITS CHARACTERISTICS AMD ASSOCIATIONS. 
109 
singular custom of pelting each other with Crabs; and even the Clergyman seldom escapes, as he 
goes and comes from the Chapel.” 
Brand in his “ Popular Antiquities ” goes into the particulars of this “ Crabbing ” affair more 
fully, and apparently on the authority of an eye-witness. The following is the account given by 
him :— 
“ On the feast of St. Kenelm (July 17th), a fair or wake was wont to be held, and the Sunday 
after the fair it was the annual practice to Crab the Parson. The last person but one who was sub¬ 
ject to this process, was a somewhat eccentric gentleman named Lee. He had been chaplain to a 
man-of-war, and was a jovial old fellow in his way, who could enter into the spirit of the thing. 
My informant well recollects the worthy divine after partaking of dinner at the solitary house near 
the church, quietly quitting the table when the time for performing the service drew nigh, and reco- 
noitring the angles of the building, and each buttress and ‘ coign of vantage’ behind which it was 
reasonable to suppose the enemy would be posted, and watching for a favourable opportunity, he 
would start forth at a fair walking pace (for he scorned to run) to reach the chapel. Around 
him thick and fast fell from ready hands a shower of Crabs, not a few telling with fearful impetus 
onhis burly person amidst the intense merriment of the rustic assailants. But the distance is small; 
he safely reaches the old Saxon porch, and the storm is over.” ( Vol. /., p. 32-44.) A later incumbent, 
the Rev. John Todd, frequently ran this gauntlet, and on one occasion there were two sacks of 
Crabs, each containing at least three bushels, emptied in the church field in readiness for throwing 
at the poor parson. All things in time get abused, and it becomes necessary to alter them, or 
entirely to abolish what has become a nuisance. So in the present case, rude fellows began to use 
missiles of a more unpleasant nature than Crabs, and the practice was interdicted. It has been 
abandoned for some years, and not a solitary Crab is now thrown. 
A few years since there existed by the road-side a mile from Bidford, in Warwickshire, five 
miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and some few hundred paces from the river, an old Crab-tree, whose 
gnarled trunk and giant size bespoke the growth of centuries, and for many years this tree had been 
associated with the name of Shakspeare, 1 and it was known in the vicinity as “ Shakspeare’s Crab¬ 
tree.” The story connected with this Crab-tree was, that the poet went with some boon companions 
on a particular occasion, to a drinking bout at Bidford, a customary thing in those rude days, and 
returning late and rather overcome with the liquor imbibed, he and his companions lay down under 
this tree and passed the night there. The tale though a mere tradition, has always been believed, 
and the Crab-tree thus became celebrated, and was always visited accordingly by admirers of the 
immortal bard. A quarto volume has been published illustrating this legend, and describing the 
villages mentioned by Shakspeare in some off-hand rhymes he is said to have uttered on awaking 
in the morning. The author of this book* gives an engraving of the tree as it appeared in 1823, 
and says “ My earliest recollection of the Crab-tree was about the year 1814, at which time it was 
frequently called “ Shakspeare’s Canopy ” ; it was regarded with almost superstitious veneration by 
the peasantry of the neighbourhood, and was then rich in foliage and fruit. The autumnal winds 
of 1816 blew off several of its stalwart boughs, and year after year it suffered equally from the effects 
of time and the depredations of unthinking visitors.” From these untoward circumstances it became 
^Shakspeare’s Crab-tree with its Legend, &c., by Charles Frederick Green, 4to. 
